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Time for a “behind-the-scenes” update

It’s been a busy summer for the team so far. We are working hard behind the scenes, tightening the bolts, oiling the chain, oiling the brakes, cleaning the oil off the brakes, you shouldn’t oil your brakes… I digress. The point is that the work is currently quite technical and there isn’t much to show. We have identified some major bottlenecks in the way the game runs and are smoothing those out. This has involved converting a number components created in Unreal Engine’s “Blueprints” (which is a type of visual coding that looks like a flowchart) into C++.

Anyway, seen as things are quiet on the update front, and we don’t have any new insect eye candy, I thought I might be able to interest some of you with a peak into our development process as a team. Our company is technically based in Birmingham, UK but only our lead developer, Matt lives there. A dedicated office is totally out of our price range and so we live and work separately with myself and John in Hannover, Germany and Liverpool, UK respectively. We use a mix of different technologies to collaborate effectively, with new things creeping in all the time.

I think I have to say that our biggest friend so far has been Google Drive.

The ability to create spreadsheets, documents and throw in whatever else into shared folders is invaluable. However, there has never been any strict organization of file structure so navigating is not as efficient as it could be, especially as we now seem to have 3 “Slug Disco” folders spread across our accounts. It is also where Matt uploads his development ‘lecture’ videos for the rest of the team, I thought I would take this opportunity to share a snippet with you. His diagram drawing skills are second to none.

We have also started using a team project management tool called “Asana”. It’s nice for creating & assigning tasks with deadlines – perfect if you enjoy receiving tons of notification emails.

To remain in contact generally we use good old Facebook, because you can always reach someone there. Though, again, not always the most efficient. The following conversation went on much longer than the screenshot suggests, sometimes you need a doodle.

If you have any questions, comments, feedback, game suggestions etc, we always want to hear from you. Contact us on our Slug Disco FB page or throw us a Stomt.

P.S. Thanks to all the Youtubers who have been covering our demo, the response is incredible, and this build is really only a snippet of what we have in store. TheWillyrex just had a go; it’s at times like this when we wish John had paid more attention in his Spanish lessons!